Council view: Bassetlaw can cash in on county investment

Coun Alan Rhodes

It’s hard to believe it’s almost a year since we opened Worksop’s new bus station. So it seems an opportune time to review the county council’s recent investment in Bassetlaw’s infrastructure and look ahead to further schemes in the pipeline.

The £3.2 milion flagship bus station has been extremely popular since opening its doors to the public on August 30 last year, providing a safe, comfortable and welcoming environment for passengers, unrecognisable from the old bus shelters in Hardy Street and Ryton Street.

With the financial backing of D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), we’re currently investing £2.4 million in improvements to the Millhouse roundabout, which will help to reduce congestion and improve safety.

I understand the frustration of motorists while the work is currently on-going – I’m afraid it’s impossible to deliver a scheme of this scale without some disruption. But the benefits upon completion this autumn will be felt for years to come.

Not least of all, it will unlock 75 hectares of land which could be used to boost employment, with the potential of creating up to 4,900 jobs in the town and, indirectly, generating around 1,100 more with the associated increase in trade and retail footfall.

Improvements to our digital infrastructure are continuing through the Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire scheme, one of the biggest civil engineering projects ever undertaken in the county, which is making superfast broadband much more widely available than ever before.

We recently started work on the £9.2 million second phase of the scheme, with Bassetlaw being one of the three districts in the county to get the vast majority of the investment.

And we have further big schemes in the pipeline too.

We’re taking forward plans to carry out much-needed improvements at junction 34 of the A1 and the nearby A614 Bawtry Road-Blyth Road junction.

Like the Millhouse roundabout scheme, this will reduce congestion and open up land for much-needed jobs.

D2N2 LEP has pledged £1.1 million in funding and we hope to get approval for the remaining £500,000 from Sheffield City Region in October.

We’re also working on plans for a potential private-sector led re-development of the Vesuvius site in Worksop.

Whilst it’s still early days, the proposals could see significant investment in employment, leisure and other uses on the site, creating around 900 jobs.